


aquarium visits

by plutoandpersephone



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alive Cole Anderson, Alternate Universe - Human, Aquariums, Cole Lives, Crush at First Sight, First Meetings, Good Person Hank Anderson, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 17:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20679290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutoandpersephone/pseuds/plutoandpersephone
Summary: Hank Anderson never thought that he would be a father - but then again, life rarely works out the way that you planned it. That's certainly what he tells himself when he locks eyes with Connor, an employee at the Detroit Aquarium, during a weekend visit.





	aquarium visits

**Author's Note:**

> Posted as part of the Hankcon Reverse Big Bang 2019.
> 
> Thank you to Neelie for the super sweet art and the wonderful inspiration for this fic! Find them over on twitter at [@neemo_chan](https://twitter.com/neemo_chan).
> 
> Find the rest of the fics and art at the [#HCRBB Directory](https://hankconrbb.wordpress.com/). It's a real treasure trove.

Hank Anderson never thought that he would be a father.

Twenty three years old and fresh out of the police academy, the only sun shining on his horizon was the promise of plenty of hard work, piles of bureaucracy, and a perhaps a few near death experiences - if the criminal underbelly of Detroit city had anything to say about it. 

Rising through the ranks, his detective exam passed in one sweet blow, Hank scoffed at those people who suggested that he slow down, even a touch.

“Take some time for yourself,” his colleagues said, as he clocked off his third double shift in a week. “Or at least take a fucking vacation.”

“No time,” Hank replied, pulling energy from some deep drilled black coffee pit in the base of his stomach. “I’ve got sergeant to make.” The answer always the same, his drive always unfaltering. 

“You find yourself someone nice yet?” That was from his parents, of course, calling from their early retirement in the Everglades. His mother, sitting on some sunny veranda, worrying about her only son. “Someone nice to settle down with?”

“No, ma.”

“Well, someone’s gotta give me some grandchildren.”

Hank rolled his eyes, always glad that his mother couldn’t see his expression. “What about Jess?” His older sister, long married to her high school sweetheart and living on some low lying farm in Wyoming.

“Look, Henry.” Sternness would enter his mother’s voice then, accompanied that tell-tale use of his full first name. “That’s not really what I care about. We just want to see you happy.”

“I am happy, ma.”

The conversations were always the same, year in, year out, cyclical as the seasons. But the way Hank saw it, in his late thirties, with Sgt. Anderson shining bright on his desk and on track to be the youngest police lieutenant in Detroit’s history? He had no reason not to be happy.

Everything was sorted, on its fixed path, perfectly following that ten step career plan that he had drawn up in his teenage bedroom all those years ago as a half-joke.

But life has a funny way of shaking those plans, even those laid out over decades, right out of their foundations. Sometimes they’re merely tremors, easy enough to right yourself afterwards and get back on your feet; sometimes they’re full force, storm warnings and buildings collapsing around your ears.

The unexpected fork in Hank’s road comes three days before his forty-second birthday, in the form of one Catherine Daniels. A sergeant from a neighbouring precinct, they are both consulting on a city wide homicide case, bodies uncovered in several different dive bars in and around the downtown area.

Their eyes meet over the romantic photographs of the gruesome triple murder. Hank asks if he can call her Cathy. She says absolutely not. 

It takes two dates in a coffee shop and one misguided date in a greasy diner before they sleep together, hot and quick on the sofa of her pristine apartment. Hank moves into said pristine apartment and a year after their first meeting, almost to the day, Catherine asks Hank to be her husband.

It’s a shotgun wedding, photos on the icy steps of the Detroit Courthouse and drinks in one of the few downtown bars that they probably won’t get murdered in.

Hank knows that it’s a bad idea. Catherine isn’t a bad person, far from it, she’s smart and moral and funny, and plenty of people tell Hank what a good couple they make. But she’s also brittle, sharp, as hard as firewood and just as prone to fiery outbursts. Behind closed doors they’re a storm, her temperament as unpredictable as lightning, and Hank’s dark moods - more frequent than they have ever been - rolling in to cover him like a purple thundercloud.

The following spring, when she tells him that she’s pregnant, there is a small, shameful part of Hank that considers questioning whether the baby is even his. 

The baby. Cole. They choose the name from a website on the Friday and Cole is born, three weeks early, on that same Sunday. As if, by virtue of selecting a name for him, they have called him into existence. 

Cole. Just under five pounds and small enough for Hank to hold neatly in two cupped hands. He’s a little small, the nurses say, but he’s healthy. Hank thinks that he’s the most perfect thing he’s ever laid eyes on.

Never really one for outward displays of emotion, he is initially surprised by the tears that come as he holds his baby in his hands. His baby. His son. Months of uncertainty and turbulence, night time conversations about whether this is the right thing to do, about whether his and Catherine’s marriage - scratch that, their relationship at all - is strong enough to raise a child. 

Hank’s eyes meet Cole’s, the same blue as the blanket they have wrapped him, the same blue as Hank’s own, and he loves him - instantly and absolutely. The storm around him calms.

The next few years are not easy. Despite his bond with Cole, Hank and Catherine’s relationship continues to break down, piece by fragmented piece. Hank sleeps on a futon folded down in the middle of Cole’s bedroom floor. Catherine starts to spend night after night at her friend Laura’s. 

One summer afternoon, with Cole toddling around on the living room floor in front of them, Catherine tells Hank that she is leaving him. It is strange how, even when you have prepared yourself for a piece of news, it can still hit you like a freight train in the middle of your chest.

“I’ve tried for you, Hank,” Catherine says, and as she speaks, she looks unimaginably tired. “And I’ve tried for Cole. But,” she spreads her hands before her, a gesture just short of a shrug. “But I just don’t love you anymore.” 

The ‘you’ is piercingly ambiguous. Does she just mean Hank? Or does she mean Hank _and_ Cole? It seems impossible to him that anyone could not love Cole.

So she leaves, moves halfway across the state with her best friend Laura - who Hank discovers six months later has always been called Lawrence - and starts to send him monthly child support payments. For a while, Hank expects a court summons to do battle over who has custody of Cole. But no such papers ever arrive, and she sends him a text around Christmas time one year to say that she has been appointed captain of a police department upstate.

Well, he thinks, good for her. 

He’s fifty-three years old and, as was always planned, the youngest police lieutenant in Detroit’s history. He keeps the badge on his belt shining brightly, and he’s rightly proud of his achievements. And, alongside all of that, he has a nine year old son.

Honestly? He wouldn’t change any of it for the world. 

When Cole was born, Hank was gifted with all manner of cautionary tales. Say goodbye to sleeping through the night, to peaceful mealtimes. Say hello to changing your shirt every time he sicks up on your shoulder - oh, and that’s gonna be five times a day, just so you know.

But he works his dogged way past each warning, changes dirty diapers, washes and sterilises countless bottles. With Catherine gone, he chooses nannies to watch Cole while he’s working and views pre-kindergartens, battles off the “you must be his grandfather” comments that come from the left, right and centre. He knows that the stress of his job has aged him prematurely - but boy, if it doesn’t warm his heart to have it confirmed by every other person that he meets.

What no one tells him, however, is how quickly Google is going to become his best friend.

Cole grows up far faster than Hank can keep track of, and with the passing months he develops an incredible, unbridled curiosity. He graduates quickly from childish cliches - why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? - to more complex concerns about the world around him. Why does lightning happen? What about thunder? How do cars work?

They watch a news report about the launch of a new module for the International Space Station.

“But how does it stay?” Cole asks. “Why doesn’t it just fly off into space?”

“Something to do with gravity,” is Hank’s first, slightly hesitant explanation, and is nowhere near detailed enough for Cole’s inquisitive seven-year old brain.

So Hank does his best, with varying amounts of help from the internet, to produce satisfactory answers to all of Cole’s questions. When Cole is old enough, Hank teaches him how to look up the answers to these questions by himself. Fostering independence, he tells himself. Mostly it’s so he can make them both a sandwich in relative peace and quiet.

Cole’s second grade teacher tells Hank, with a hint of exasperation evident in her voice: “Cole asks a lot of questions, doesn’t he?” and then, a laugh, “sometimes I think he could probably stand up and teach the class.” Hank burns with pride at that.

Two weeks after procuring a map of the Amtrak network from the local library, he explains to Hank, seemingly from memory, the quickest route to visit his grandparents in Miami. 

“You have to go via Chicago,” Cole explains, with a sincere, innocent sadness. “And probably Washington DC too.”

“Good job we can just get an airplane then, huh?”

Cole tilts his head thoughtfully to one side. “Oh. Yeah.”

Two weeks before his ninth birthday, in a flurry of new interest, Cole asks to go to the aquarium. 

“The aquarium?”

Cole nods, not looking at his dad. His gaze is more focused on the pages of the book that he has propped up against the milk jug. 

“You wanna have a birthday party there?”

“No,” Cole shakes his head, his big pale eyes finding Hank’s own. “I want to see the stingrays.”

It’s a simple enough request, and Hank feels his heart swell several sizes with the knowledge of what a bright and sweet kid he has somehow managed to raise out of the wreckage of his marriage. A silver lining so brilliant it eclipses the whole cloud.

Detroit Aquarium is a sleek and modern building upstate, with a pale stone edifice and a plate glass front. The signage above the front door seems to be riding along the curved back of a shark, the capital ‘A’ a dorsal fin, sliding up out of the water. 

On the car ride up, Cole talks about stingrays, and sharks, and a little about school, mostly the new boy in his class who wears glasses so thick they make his eyes seem _like, really big_. By the time they turn into the aquarium parking lot, he’s practically bouncing up and down in his seat with excitement.

The admissions hall is crowded, not surprising given that it’s Saturday and there’s already a faint drizzle coming down from a grey sky. They are surrounded by other wide-eyed children and their guardians, some looking just as ready as their children, others laden down with bags and looking exhausted before the day has even begun. A small group pass by them, dressed in matching paper party hats that swim through the crowd like a school of fish.

Cole is (and he’s said this enough times) far too old to hold Hank’s hand anymore, but he gives his dad’s fingers a brief squeeze as they wait in line to buy tickets.

“You excited, bud?” Hank asks, and Cole nods, without reply. The line of his brow is very serious. 

“Hi!” The young server grins at them as they approach the desk. He’s not long out of his teens, with a shock of red hair and clear, green eyes. “Welcome to Detroit Aquarium.”

Hank buys their tickets, and Cole pockets one of the information booklets that line the front of the admissions desk.

“What are you excited to see today?” The server asks, handing Hank their tickets. They are both printed with a rainbow-bright shoal of fish.

Cole looks down, overcome by an uncharacteristic bout of shyness in the face of an unfamiliar, enthusiastic adult. Hank gives him a nudge on the shoulder - _go on, it’s alright._

“The stingrays,” Cole replies, and then continues, with a touch more confidence, “they’re my favourite.”

“Are they?” The man grins and peers behind them at the large clock on the wall. It shows a quarter to eleven, the dolphin shaped hour hand just about jumping out of the water. “Well, if you head down to Stingray Bay in about fifteen minutes, one of our aquarists is going to be feeding some of our rays.”

“That sound good?” Hank asks. The sun-bright smile that appears on Cole’s face is answer enough. “Sounds good. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. Have a good day!” A brief wave, and another employee shows them through a heavy set of double doors, each one with a rusted-looking porthole set into it. 

It’s less crowded inside the aquarium itself; the fluorescent light and general hubbub of the admissions area gives way to a thinner stream of people, faces illuminated by the humming glow from the different exhibits. 

They pass a low tank, open at the top, where small groups of children are wrist deep in the shallow water. A child far younger than Cole, who is standing on a wooden step to be able to reach into the tank, strokes a small brown hermit crab with an expression of barely contained awe. 

“Hey, Cole. You wanna stop here?” There are a few spaces along the edges of the counters, which have been made to look like the jagged, uneven sides of a rockpool.

“Not right now,” Cole replies, with a shake of his head. Hank knows this single-mindedness - Cole has set his mind on one thing, and he’s not going to be deterred from it. He often wonders if he himself has enough of that doggedness for it to have rubbed off on his son, or whether Cole has simply fostered it himself in the development of his own, unique personality.

So Hank nods, _fine_, and they continue to follow the signs round to Stingray Bay. Cole leads and Hank follows a few steps behind, firstly through a room made to look like a mangrove forest, dark and warm, the tanks filled with fat brown snapper and small, scuttling crabs. In one tank, swim bright yellow seahorses, suspended in the water like punctuation marks. 

There’s a sparse group already gathered when they arrive at the stingrays. The room is a wide semicircle, with a single tank that rises out of the floor in a great half bubble. The one flat wall is built up with rough, plaster rocks, and the ceiling, patterned with pale blue and yellow tiles, slopes in a dome high over their heads.

“Dad!” Cole grabs at the arm of his jacket, his other hand outstretched and pointing. “Look!”

Inside the tank, the stingrays swim in wide circles, each one a dark shadow against the imitation of the pale seabed, dotted with shells and stones. Occasionally, they move to overlap one another or bury themselves into the sand, the movement of their bodies mesmeric in the still, clear water. The light shifts in dappled bands over their grey skin. 

“That’s a southern ray,” Cole mutters, the tip of his index finger pressed against the curved edge of the tank. One of the rays turns a neat circle, raising the edges of its body to show a creamy white underside. 

“They look kinda like pancakes, huh?” Hank says, laying his hand on Cole’s shoulder. 

“Not really,” Cole replies, frowning. Evidently this is far too serious a situation for Hank’s dad jokes. 

“Right, well,” Hank shrugs, understanding that this must be the wrong time for humour. “Fair enough.”

They stand for a few minutes as the crowd thickens around the edges of the tank. At six foot three, Hank feels it would be injudicious for him to stand in front of any children, so he nudges Cole forward and takes a step towards the back. He watches Cole’s head, that familiar mop of golden curls, as he presses himself into a space right up against the tank.

A moment later, there’s a click and the faint hiss of static. Silence falls gradually - parents shushing and children making their final remarks - and a man appears on the other side of the room, standing on a wide walkway that runs below the false cliff face. 

He’s about thirty, Hank guesses, although he could be younger, with brown hair pushed back into a slightly severe style, too harsh for his face. Like all of the other aquarium employees, he’s wearing a dark blue polo shirt, and his is neatly fastened to the very top button, a plastic name tag glinting on one side of his chest. Even with good eyes, Hank would be too far away to read it, but a part of him flashes suddenly with the urge to know what it says.

He’s very attractive. The thought travels through Hank’s head before he has a chance to stop it. There has to be some moral implication behind considering the attractiveness of a strange man when you’re on an educational father-son day out. And certainly when he is about to deliver an undoubtedly enthusiastic talk about sea creatures to your enraptured child. 

Thankfully, before Hank can dwell on his indelicacies anymore, the man starts to talk.

“Good morning everyone!” He says and his voice - slightly low, husky at the edges (a fact which doesn’t help put Hank’s thought processes back on track) - is amplified by the speaker system. There’s a smattering of replies, mostly adults with involuntary politeness built in. “Welcome to Detroit Aquarium. My name is Connor.”

Connor takes a step down towards the edge of the tank, retrieving a bucket from behind one of the rough rocky outcrops. He begins to talk about the different types of stingrays living in their tank - Cole turns to grin toothily at Hank when he mentions the southern ray - and how they keep the water balanced to best imitate their natural habitat. His manner is enthusiastic but not condescending, informative but not patronising. The children - and many of the adults - are leaning towards him over the tank, engrossed.

“We have a couple of other creatures in this room too,” Connor continues. “I think our green moray eel might be my favourite, but we probably won’t see him today-” his mouth turns down, a dramatic expression. A few of the children laugh. “Does anyone know why?” 

Several hands go up around the room. Connor points at one girl, her dark brown hair pulled back into a red ribbon.

“Because he’s scared of people?”

“Not quite,” Connor replies, giving her a kind smile. Hank can't help but notice how his mouth turns slightly crooked on one side. “Good try though.”

Hank can see that Cole has raised his hand, quietly, not waving his palm in the air as a couple of the other children are doing. His polite certainty must have worked, because Connor signals towards him next.

“Moray eels are nocturnal,” Cole says. His voice is small but confident, and Hank wonders how many times he’s rehearsed that answer in his head before speaking. “They come out mostly at night.”

“Very good,” Connor looks impressed, flashing that same bright smile in Cole’s direction. Hank feels a bright kernel of pride bury itself in his chest. “What’s your name?”

“Cole.”

“Well, as Cole very correctly said, moray eels mostly come out at night.” As Connor speaks, he puts his hand into the water and lets it pass over the smooth backs of the stingrays. He answers every question with patience, asks for suggestions and answers from the group, and as he talks, a curl of hair flops out of his neat hairstyle and falls over his forehead. Hank is quietly charmed.

“I think we’ve made them wait long enough,” Connor says after a while. “Let’s give them some lunch. Anyone know what we’re going to feed our rays today?”

Hank is certain that Cole will know the answer, and sure enough, his hand goes straight up into the air. Connor points towards him. “Cole, right?” Hank can see Cole’s head nod in response. “What do you think?”

“Small fish, probably,” Cole replies. “Um. I think they’re called sprat?” He says the last word as if it’s strange and unruly in his mouth. Hank wonders how often his discusses small fish species with his friends in the schoolyard. Probably not all that often.

“Wow - well, you’re right!” Reaching his hand into the bucket, Connor pulls out a small grey-blue fish. There’s a murmur around the edge of the tank. Hank hears a few clear expressions of disgust from a few of the smaller children, who stand with their noses pressed right up against the glass. 

The rays rise up above the surface to meet him, rearing white-edged discs that twist up out of the water. Connor narrates the entire time, anecdotes about the creatures in the tank before him, their provenance, their personalities. Hank finds it hard to believe that these weird beings, floating like silk in the tides, can have much of their own personalities. But the way Connor talks about them, he could certainly start to consider it.

Connor finishes his talk by asking if anyone in the crowd has any more questions. Chatter begins around the edges of the tank, a few of the adults shaking their heads, gesturing to their children to come and join them. Hank knows that Cole has questions, he always does, but he’s busy watching one of the stingrays bury itself in the sand once more.

“I must have done a thorough job then,” Connor grins. “Thank you for coming, everyone, I hope you’ve enjoyed meeting our rays today!”

There’s a small round of applause - Hank can see Cole joining in enthusiastically - and the group begins to dissipate, most of them heading out through the archway signposted “Shoaling Ring”. Connor gives them a brief wave and disappears through a door behind the tank.

Cole stays put, his forehead practically touching the glass. Hank waits for a few moments before walking down to join him. 

“You enjoy that?” Hank asks, placing a hand on Cole’s shoulder. 

Cole doesn’t move. “It was so cool. Look. Look at it burying itself in the sand.”

“I see it, bud. You wanna stay and watch it a bit longer?” 

Cole nods. The room begins to empty around them. Hank watches the surface of the water ripple and sway, watches how the reflected light catches in Cole’s golden hair.

Behind them, there’s the sound of a door clicking closed and a man’s voice. “Oh! Are you still here?” 

It’s Connor. 

Close up, Hank can see that his hair has a slight curl to it, far from the severe style that he had perceived from the back of the room. His skin is clear and pale, his cheeks and forehead punctuated with a series of sweet, dark freckles. 

“Hi, Cole,” Connor’s voice is what finally draws Cole out of his stingray reverie, and he turns away from the glass. He doesn’t respond right away, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because Connor isn’t looking at Cole anymore. He’s looking at Hank.

“Hi,” Connor extends his hand. “You must be Cole’s dad.”

“Uh huh,” Hank accepts the proffered handshake. Connor’s palm is smooth, his fingers long and slender, neatly manicured. There’s a freckle right on the bridge of his nose. “It’s Hank.”

“Nice to meet you, Hank.”

Hank is sure he imagines it, but Connor seems to turn with a certain amount of reluctance to address Cole once again. His eyes - clear brown, amber at the edges, thick, dark lashes - linger on Hank’s for several long seconds. Hank feels a little stunned beneath the weight of his gaze.

“You know a lot about the stingrays, Cole,” Connor says. Without the microphone and the crowd, his voice is calm and very even, his intonation purposeful. Somewhat serious, his enthusiasm now channelled in a different way. 

Cole’s head dips, shy beneath the praise. “They’re my favourite. I think I know the most about them.”

Connor nods, as if he understands. Perhaps they’re his favourite too.

“How old are you, Cole?” Connor asks.

“I’m going to be nine next week.”

“Nine?” He tilts his head to one side, considering. “Hm. Not quite old enough for a job at the aquarium yet. Give it a few years, maybe.”

Cole beams with pride at the insinuation that he might have enough knowledge to work alongside the other aquarists. Hank gives him an indulgent smile.

“This is his birthday present,” Hank says, and as he speaks, Connor turns to look towards him. Something twists, tight and unfamiliar, in the depths of Hank’s chest; that steady gaze is like a hand pressed right up against his ribcage. “Right, Cole?”

Cole launches into a speech about his birthday, why he wanted to come to the aquarium, what his favourite sea creatures are - _apart from stingrays, of course._ All of the shyness at meeting a new adult has dissolved at his feet, replaced by a desire, one which Hank knows well, to press all of his recently learned sea life facts into one conversation. 

“Do you have any fish at home?” Connor asks, when Cole finally stops to draw breath.

Cole shakes his head, and Hank can tell that he’s ready to leave it at that, not seeing any point in talking about his home life when there are crustaceans out there to be discussed. Hank lays steadying a hand on his shoulder. 

“No fish,” Hank replies. Cole is still learning that there are conventions of how you might steer a conversation (conventions imparted by boring adults, mostly) rather than just barrelling ahead with all the new information that you’re desperate to impart. “We have a dog, though.”

“He’s called Sumo!” Cole adds. “He’s a St. Bernard.” They’d bought Sumo a few years ago, as much at Hank’s behest as Cole’s, and the boy and the dog have a deep and wordless bond of the kind that Hank does not exactly understand. Sure, it’s Hank who pays the vet bills, but it’s Cole who Sumo goes to when he feels unwell after eating something weird off the neighbour’s lawn.

“A dog! I like dogs.” Connor says, and Hank gets a very real impression that he’s the sort of person who has a hard time lying about anything. The emotion in his voice is achingly sincere.

“Sumo is the best dog,” Cole seems happy enough to switch from one of his areas of interest to another. “Dad. Dad, show Connor a picture of Sumo.”

Hank isn’t sure whether sharing photographs in his place of work would overstep some kind of professional boundary that Connor has built up. “That okay?” He asks. 

“That’s fine,” Connor smiles at him, and goddamn if Hank wasn’t right about him being a bad liar. His expression is pulled taut as Hank takes his cell phone out of his jacket pocket, although Hank can’t quite put his finger on exactly what is making him uncomfortable. A compromise of his professionalism, as Hank had expected? Maybe. But perhaps it’s something else. Hank stores the thought right at the back of his mind and makes a silent agreement with himself never to look at it again.

Rather than flicking through photograph after photograph, Hank flashes his lockscreen at Connor. It’s a picture of Cole and Sumo at the park, Cole with his arm slung around Sumo’s big neck, both of them apparently beaming widely for the camera. Sumo’s tongue lolls out of one side of his mouth.

“Oh, he’s lovely!” That sincerity snaps right back into place. Connor really does like dogs. “A big boy, right?”

“He’s taller than me,” Cole says, holding up his hand to an approximation of where Sumo might reach up to were he standing on his hind legs. “Not taller than dad, though.”

“No.” Again, that slight tightness draws across Connor’s face. Hank works hard on his refusal to acknowledge it. “I don’t imagine he’s taller than your dad.”

“Dad’s work colleague-” Cole says those last two words in a clear imitation of an adult that he’s heard say them before, “came to take him for a walk this morning because he’s not allowed in the aquarium.”

“No, well, I’m sure he’s very well behaved,” Connor says. “But it wouldn’t be sensible to let other animals inside the aquarium. The fish might get jealous.”

Cole nods, as if he is understanding and sympathetic towards the fish.

“Where are you going next?” Connor asks. “I’m doing a talk at Conservation Cove in about fifteen minutes, but if you wanted me to show you to the next exhibit then I’m happy to do that.” There’s a touch of that presenter’s enthusiasm back in his voice, a practised intonation as he offers to show customers to their next destination.

“What do you think, Cole?” Hank asks, and Cole gives a brief shrug. “The stingrays were the star attraction, I think.”

“Well, let me take you through to the shoaling ring,” Connor indicates the wide archway to the left of the stingray tank, which is signposted entirely appropriately. Hank is certain that they could find their way unaided. “I’m going that way anyway.”

Hank finds it impossible to turn down the help of this very beautiful and bright man. Before he can wonder about ulterior motives, he gives himself a mental slap, one which rings loudly to the tune of _he’s just doing his job_.

So Connor leads them through to the next room, down a narrow, darkened corridor, with Cole walking behind him and Hank bringing up the rear.

The shoaling ring is a tall, circular room, the walls of which are made up almost entirely of huge pieces of plate glass, stretching almost floor-to-ceiling. Behind the glass, swim hundreds of fish, their organised school like a thick, dark cloud, each one of them as large as Hank’s outstretched hand. 

It’s like being on the inside of a test tube, Hank thinks. Or it’s like they are the specimens to be examined, and it’s the water that is pressing in from outside, and they are the only people left in the whole world. The whole room is lit with a deep blue light, supposedly to give the impression that they are underwater, and the effect weighs heavy on Hank’s shoulders. It is the eye of a swirling, dark blue storm. 

He watches as Cole steps closer to the tank, practically pressing his face against the curved surface of the glass, as if he hopes somehow to fall right through into the water. Perhaps he does imagine that as he stands there, suspends himself in amongst the shoal. 

Both Hank and Connor step forward at the same time to join him, one on either side as he stares up into the great blue darkness before them. The fish are uniform in size and colour, each one speckled silver, with a black and orange tail that shoots out behind them like a flame. 

“Flagtail fish,” Connor comments, and Cole nods without looking away from the shifting mass before him. “More than a hundred.”

It’s very quiet in this room, the other people who are standing with them are watching in similar awe as the fish weave and swerve together as one. 

The blue light throws Cole’s face into a high, bright relief. Hank watches him, observes that open mouthed awe at seeing something new, something that throws the miraculous, bizarre beauty of the natural world into very sharp focus. Cole has pulled the information leaflet out of his pocket and is clutching in his hands, although his eyes are firmly fixed on the swirling school above then. And Hank watches Connor, too, he can’t help it. His gaze follows Cole’s, preempting his questions before he answers them, both of them talking in low voices. 

He explains to Cole how the fish sometimes move with the tide, sometimes against it. How they learn what is right for them at that moment, how they feel the waters shift and change around them, as if the sea itself is part of their shoal. As Connor talks, Hank imagines him turning that serious gaze to meet Hank’s own, imagines those features in shadow, the turquoise light of the tank glowing behind him. The freckle beneath his lower lip. He feels instantly, caustically stupid for even thinking about it.

After a few minutes, Connor straightens up and turns to face the pair of them. “I have to go now, I’m afraid.”

Cole looks disappointed. Hank sincerely hopes that the same emotion doesn’t reflect in his own face.

“Okay, well - say thank you to Connor, Cole.”

“Thank you,” Cole says. He can’t hide the slight resentment in his voice at losing their personal tour guide, but he’s polite enough. 

“It was nice to meet you, Cole. You keep reading about those stingrays, okay?” Connor says, grinning. “See you again?”

The last question is definitely directed at Hank. He isn’t imagining it. Something inside him bubbles with _say yes_, but he pushes it down and gives a little, non-committal shrug. “I hope so.”

And Connor turns to leave, heading out through a door labelled “Staff Only”. The two words are being held up by a stern looking cartoon octopus. 

Hank watches the door click closed. Cole has already turned back to look at the flagtails, a hundred flames flickering in the water. Hank tries to forget about Connor’s words for now, stores them alongside the amber flecks in Connor’s eyes, that strange fluttering in his chest, tight and unfamiliar. It can’t do well to examine it. 

His lets his hand rest on Cole’s shoulder. 

“Pretty beautiful, huh?” He says. Cole nods. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come and say hi on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/andpersephone)


End file.
